Criterion has already put out an early Melville crime film,
Bob le Flambeur,
and this is his second-to-last picture from the other end of his
career. Le Cercle rouge is another ascetic, stylized police-vs-crooks
story as was his avowed masterpiece, Le Samourai from a few
seasons earlier. Like other later Melville films, it's a ritualized,
unemotional and deliberately-paced caper story that builds on familiar
but absorbing characters.

Synopsis:

Criminal hotshot Corey (Alain Delon) leaves prison and embarks
immediately on a new crime. He just happens to link up with Vogel (Gian-Maria
Volonté), a fugitive who escaped right after sentencing. Their plan is to
knock over
a jewelry showroom equipped with half a dozen state of the art burglar alarms, and
to to the job they bring in Jansen (Yves Montand), an alcoholic ex-cop who prides
himself on his marksmanship. Opposing them is the pragmatic Captain Mattei
(André Bourvil), a plodder who knows he'll catch them in the end - he's
not above blackmail to secure the information he needs.

Melville's last film is the very uneven Un Flic. It has some atmospheric
action
scenes but gets very sloppy in some departments, especially special effects.
Worse, it miscasts Alain Delon as a terse inspector and
American Richard Crenna as an impassive criminal, instead of the other way
around. Le Cercle rouge plays it straight and fairly
predictable all the way through. It was written in the early 50s in response to
Melville's favorite film, The Asphalt Jungle, but
put off for twenty years by the success of caper pictures like
Du rififi chez le hommes.

In the extras Melville characterizes himself as an action director, but Le
Cercle rouge hasn't much action. It's more of a
meditation on the caper picture, with stylized characters we have to study to
understand. They turn out to be exactly as advertised; the
crooks played by Delon and Volonté convey their pasts through their eyes,
but other than a couple of details, we know almost
nothing about them. A possible plot thread is suggested when Delon seems
embittered by a girl he left behind (Ana Douking), who turns out
to be sleeping with the mob boss he protected with silence while in prison. The
tangent really doesn't go anywhere - she has an early nude scene but then disappears.

The fallen cop played by Yves Montand is shown a bit more deeply. We witness his
D.T.s as colorful snakes, spiders and lizards crawl into his room
while he sleeps, but the lighting of this scene defuses any threatening feeling
it might have. Yet his specific problem with the police
force - why he's willing to pull off the crime - is never explained except as
therapy for his alcoholism. His obsession with marksmanship and
the special bullets he uses to 'pick a lock' are nicely-observed, as is his
simply sniffing a liquor flask to steady his nerves during
the crime.

Equally interesting is the cop on the case played by André Bourvil.
Bourvil is mainly known as a comedian but is especially good in this serious
role as a deadpan inspector who uses crooked means when necessary.
He pampers his cats and nurses his snitches out on the street, but he's no more
lovable than the crooks, as seen when he frames nightclub
owner Francois Périer's son on a narcotics rap to extort the man's
cooperation.

These classic French crime films seem even more in love with fate and doom than
their American noir inspirations. Le Cercle rouge surprises
us by being downright pedestrian when it comes to spelling out its theme; a grim
Police Comissioner tells Bourvil that all men are wicked,
and that includes cops and robbers. It's proven out, but not before several more
verbal repetitions of the same idea. Some plot contrivances
are fun (Delon, free from prison, hooks up with Volonté, an escapee on
his way to prison) and others a bit clunky. Melville omits any
female presence in the story except for a brief and unrewarding glimpse of
Delon's ex-moll at the beginning, a stage-ful of joyless cabaret
dancers, and a young waitress who presents Delon with a red rose before the
final chapter. Action fans waiting for something to happen
will smell symbolism and become resentful.

I liked the look of the film, which always has a cool and dark feel of realism to
it. The lighting is almost too restrained (as in the
aforementioned D.T.'s sequence) but the cold and comfortless streets are a nice
switch from glitz and hype - this caper is the anti-Ocean's
Eleven. Some of the cutting is questionable, with some jerky continuity here
and there where it looks like Melville was going
for something smoother. When Montand decides to bypass the fancy gun tripod and
make his all-important rifle shot by hand, there are rapid cuts
to his comrades doing double-takes at each other, and it looks too much like
filmmaking 101 ... Melville's framing and shot choice, at least
in this film, aren't all that distinctive.

After some fairly interesting caper action disarming a jewelry store's many
security devices (with the robbers wearing The Green Hornet
look-alike masks), the wrap-up is appropriately muted. The crooks' dedication
to their own professionalism causes them to be loyal unto
the bitter end, in a Wild Bunch-like gesture toward male fidelity. Melville
may see himself as a man's man of directors, but here the
style and ritual don't quite overcome the familiarity of events, so to speak -
there's little emotional charge with these men. We enjoy
Le Cercle rouge and admire many scenes and character details, but it's
no Asphalt Jungle, just a French echo.

Criterion's double disc DVD of Le Cercle rouge is their first offering
where I've felt there's too much of a good thing. The second
disc has several 1970s television shows on the director that present long
interview segments with the Stetson-hatted Frenchman. The average Melville
addict will flip, but after a while I had to ask myself what was so interesting
about him to merit all the attention. Likewise, the extended
interviews with his assistant director and biographer were too long and adulatory,
without really convincing me that Melville was a major
talent (not that he isn't). The assistant director's interview just dragged on
with mundane stuff about life on a Melville set that could
have been reject material from an EPK for a new film. I love the writing of Rui
Nogueira, but the history he relates of his relationship with Melville
needed to be prefaced with a reason why I should care ...

Better at selling the art of Melville were the text extras in the paper insert.
The posters and still section were interesting as well.
I realize that John Woo worships Melville, but since I've yet to see a Woo film
that impressed me in any but a technical way, it doesn't
mean much. Perhaps it's my failing, and I need to see more of Melville's earlier,
obviously worshipped work. Both Le Cercle rouge
and the extras on this DVD make him seem a commercial director with an
exaggerated reputation.